Soil Security: Dimensions.

Those in the soil science community know of the crucial role that soil plays in accumulating and refining nutrients and water to secure our food, fibre, bio-fuel and fresh water production. They also know that soil is the habitat for the largest diversity of organisms that support environmental health and provide a future gene pool to advance innovations in products for supporting human health. These functions that soil provides places it well, affecting the existential global challenges of food, water and energy security, the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services, all of which affect human health and sustainability. Much of soil science has focused on measuring the biophysical dimensions to assess the role of soil but the future success will need the role of soil to be discussed beyond the expertise of soil scientist to include those who address the socio-economic dimensions, and it is this need that has partly driven the emergence of the concept of Soil Security.

To realize the concept of soil security five dimensions have been proposed to frame the concept and enable the relative role of the soil functions to be measured. The first two biophysical dimensions of capability and condition essentially ask the questions, ‘what can this soil do?’ and ‘what is the current state of the soil and can it do this?’. Capability can be views soil from a multifunctional perspective while condition is monofunctional, and this has been the core business of research and discussion of soil science. While every body’s problem, but not the central concern of the soil science community is the socio-economic dimensions which equally affect the decisions that are made when soil is not secure. Soil security demands that there is a need to place a value on soil and that the soil’s capital and that of its functions can be estimated, and while doing so there is a need to grasp who people are connected with soil, and collectively how these dimensions contribute to the development of good policy. These three aspects are referred to as the capital, connectivity, and codification dimensions of soil security, respectively.        

Using these five dimensions it will be possible to understand the role of soil and its functions in addressing the global challenges and to use this to quantify the soil resource by; measuring it, mapping it, managing it and forecasting its change. This can only be fully and effectively achieved when soil scientists, economists, social scientists and policy makers all contribute to providing secure soil and in doing so recognise that this decision process is motivated by achieving the best possible outcomes for securing the soil resource.